Alumni
INVENTORY (Slovenia) ​
DARKO SINKO
Darko Sinko (1979) is film director from Ljubljana, Slovenia. He graduated at Film academy (AGRFT) in Ljubljana. He has directed and produced several documentaries, including Critical Generation and Little Houses. His short film Schoolmates received the Vesna Award for the best screenplay at the Slovenian Film Festival in 2015.
SYNOPSIS
Boris Zupančič is an ordinary man in his fifties. One night, while reading newspaper after the dinner, a window crashes behind him, somebody has just shot at him. The police arrive, detective Andrej is in charge of the investigation. But Boris has absolutely no enemies at all, there are no suspects – he seems to be a completely uninteresting man to kill.
Boris goes back to his everyday life. Relatives, neighbors, co-workers are shocked, but his spirit is high, he is certain that the shooting was only an unusual coincidence. Together with Andrej, he is working on a \”connections map\” of all the people he is in contact with. The police find out that there is a man with exactly the same name as Boris, his namesake, but there is nothing interesting about him for the investigation. Since there are no clues, police shuts down the investigation.
Boris tries to live as he did before, but now, he is not able to. He starts to investigate on his own. After investigating the location from where he was shot at, Boris visits his friends, mother in a nursing home, his son’s family, his sister, and so on. He is surprised to discover that he is hated by more people than he could possibly imagine. He is getting more and more suspicious to everybody around him, his wife, son, and friends seems increasingly strange. He finds out that his perception of his own life was merely an illusion.
Boris is becoming anxious, paranoid and vulnerable, he starts to do unusual things and get into trouble. And while things are getting worse and worse for Boris, suddenly detective Andrej appears again, with big news – the police have a suspect. It is a student called Nejc, who has psychological problems, he has already admitted the crime. Boris feels a great relief.
He settles back to his normal life again, goes to work, and home is becoming comfortable for him again. He and Alenka visit their son’s family, it is beautiful day and they are having picnic in the garden. Suddenly Andrej comes, saying that it was not the student Nejc who did it, the ballistic tests do not match. Boris is shocked. He is watching his family from the distance; they all look suspicious to him again.
DIRECTOR'S STATMENT
The most important thing that I would like to remark regarding the project is that an important intention is to make it funny. It is not exactly a black comedy – it is an (existentialist) thriller, dealing with loneliness, fear, suspicion, paranoia, and relativity of life in an absurd and ironical manner. With a tongue-in-cheek, these bitter themes are not so absolute any more. The setting is quite irrational in a way. But on the other hand, it might be a way to show how vulnerable we are if we are not able to trust each other.
Production company: December (Slovenia)
Producer: Vlado Bulajić
Contact: +386 40 454 681 vlado@decemberfilm.si
Financing in place: €220,000 (Slovenian Film Center), €115,000 (Viba Film Studio)
Start of principal photography: Spring 2019